Baby Grand Piano

This month at Take Out Photo, the Monthly Special is Music + Photo. When I first saw this special, I didn't think I would be able to come up with anything to do with music. I love music and love to sing, but I'm not around musical instruments, and I'm just not creative otherwise. With it on my mind for a few days, it hit me just what I was meant to do. Not because it really is the only musical instrument that's a part of my life anymore, my junior high flute playing days are over, but because of the sentimental value of it.

This white baby grand piano sits in my mother-in-law's front room, it didn't start out here and it doesn't belong to her.

In 1998, my 4 1/2 year old sister, Jacquelyn, passed away. This piano was bought in memory of her and sat in my dad's front room with a picture of Jacquelyn on top of it. It's beautiful just like she was.

After my dad passed away in 2002, things got rough in so many different ways. One of which was the house being sold. The only one of us siblings that had room for it at the time was Brianne. Later when her family moved to England, we didn't know what we would do with it. My mother-in-law was wonderful and let us "store" this beautiful white baby grand piano in her front room. How thankful I am for her willingness to share in this family treasure with us.
I didn't plan that these would be the pictures I would take, but as I was "practicing" what shots I wanted, the boys just so happened to be playing it. I love them so much more then the piano by itself.
I love that Malcolm is trying to look inside to see how it works.
I love Quinn's dirty feet with his bandaids he insisted would make his owie stop hurting.

Mother's Day Weekend

We spent Mother's Day weekend back in the home town with Matt's family. My parents were out of town for the weekend. We had a fun weekend, but I only took these first three pictures on Saturday, then all the rest are from Sunday. On Saturday, us girls did a little shopping at the going out of business sale at Gottschalks. Then we got a pedicure all together. I wish I would have had my camera. It was fun, for the most part, despite one creepy guy doing the pedicures!

Saturday I had Malcolm and Quinn decorate some flower rice krispies for their grandma's. I took the idea from Laura. I made rice krispies treats then cut out flowers with cookie cutters. The boys then dipped them in white chocolate we dyed. They turned out really cute. I wish I would have remembered to take a picture of the finished project!

Sunday we had a BBQ, it was nice to have a warm day outside and to have a picnic in the beautiful yard. I ended up loving this picture, so had to post it.
I think the football is bigger then him.
LOVE this picture!

Ben making the boys work with him, Malcolm is not quite sure what Ben is explaining. Haha!
Winston has learned great things from his Paka.
This johnny jump up was growing all by it's little lonesome on the patio steps. I thought it was picture worthy.
If I had been more with it, I would have posted this picture for Take Out Photo's May monthly special.
Matt's cousin Robin and her husband David were working in Seattle for the summer, so they came for the weekend and I was able to meet them. They just got married in December and are such a cute, sweet couple. Robin is beautiful and so nice! I was so glad to finally meet her! Sadly, the job in Seattle ended up not working out, so they aren't that close anymore.
They were so cute with our kids. They played with them a lot. The boys think they are the best ever. Sunday they played football with them. Apparently David was using Malcolm as the ball!

I don't know why, but I really like this picture, even though Quinn's face is cut off. I love the way he's holding his cute lips, but most of all, I love his shoes on the wrong feet!

Matt's favorite picture of the bunch. BBQ hot dogs, I'm posting it just for him. Doesn't it just make you want to go eat a hot dog!?!
It was Mother's Day, but I have no pictures of my mom, Cynthia or me.

Foreground

This month at Take Out Photo the monthly special is foreground. It's the very last second for me to post this, but I'm just glad I'm getting it up at all. If you haven't noticed, I haven't been blogging much. I haven't been taking many pictures either. I'm blaming it on the cold weather and my blue mood. I need a change of something in my life! I'm in a rut. 

Anyways I didn't think I would have anything to post this month, but I did take this picture while playing outside at Matt's parents last week. I was playing with my aperture and focal points on the grass, then took this one of Winston. I think it counts as foreground. I love the bokeh of the grass in the foreground. Winston looks so dang cute just sitting there on his knees too.

Thinking I didn't really have anything to post, I had gone through some old pictures and came upon these from last June. I've never posted them, so I thought it would be a good chance. Plus, I think they are pretty cute pictures. I'm not sure why I never posted them. I had been shooting exclusively in manual for only three months and was still learning to do it, a lot of them didn't turn out good, I guess that's why I didn't post them. In this first one, I love the wheat right in front of Quinn. I didn't mean for it to be there, and thought it had ruined the picture back then, but now I love it. 
I've always loved this picture, both the boys started running at me as I was trying to get a picture of them. I love how they are both barely in the frame. It was really back lite so I tried using the flash. Quinn was really bright right in the front, and Malcolm was really dark. I like the original still, but playing in photoshop, it really made the picture more perfect. It was fun to play with layers and layer masks to get Malcolm out from the dark.
We stopped by this wheat field on the way back home so I could feed Winston. Matt took the boys out and tried taking pictures, until he got frustrated, so I took over. I love them a lot more then I did then. Funny how that works.

A Perfect Day

I've been waiting for the perfect day to get out and take some pictures. Well today was the day, it was warmer, close to 50^ , there was some sun and Matt was home to help tame the wild beasts. This month at Take Out Photo, the monthly special is background. I knew where I wanted to go for the pictures, because I've been wanting to do it for a long time. I'm glad the challenge pushed me to get out and do it. I got a lot of shots that I think are cute, some that I love, but a lot that aren't technically right, but at least I got out and did it. I also used a lens I had bought 5 minutes prior to doing the shoot.

On craigs list, Matt found a canon film EOS ELAN slr camera with a 28-80mm f3.5 lens and 9 filters for $30! Apparently some of the pictures were coming back with a big thick black line through them. I have no knowledge about the camera at all, but figured $30 for an extra lens would be worth it. We checked it out, it's older, but I couldn't pass it up. While Matt was running an errand, he took the camera into Kits Cameras and they think it was just the shutter sticking, and it looked like there's something sticky on it. So I think we got an awesome deal, I don't know that I will ever use the camera, but an extra lens and filters will probably be handy. She said most of the filters are for black and white photography, so I need to research them out. Sweet!

So I tried bribing the kids with ice cream cones if they would cooperate. They did okay, but they do not know how to sit still and look at the camera. Malcolm kept telling me it was boring. Then he always turns his head to the camera, but looks somewhere else out of the corner of his eye. Quinn just can't stop moving at all! I came home and have played on photoshop the rest of the night. I wasn't planning on it, but I got sucked in. I had fun playing with some free actions that I never use and got carried away. So here's my attempt, my different backgrounds, and some pretty handsome boys! I'll warn you, there's more then a couple.
I love Quinnie loving on Winston! Isn't that cute!
See, they don't even know how to look at me. There is a busy road about 20 feet from here, I'm sure that didn't help. But I like that there looking somewhere else!
We took our family pictures for our Christmas cards in this same area. I love the color of this old building. There are rail cars about 3-4 ft away from this building, so I had to squat underneath them to get the pictures.
Is that not cute or what! I must say, I have some good looking boys!
It was Matt's idea to use the contrast of the horizontal and vertical lines. He'th tho thmart!
Matt also took this picture while I was jumping up on the rail car to get a different view. He's way better at this then me!
I got some really cute pictures for this angle, but one of the boys were always doing something weird. See what I mean! Malcolm will give me his weird fake grin, but he'll look at something else. I try telling him to look at me, and he just turns his head and leave his eyes focused on whatever he's looking at! Ha!
I tried getting Matt to squat next to the boys, but he protested. Said he would have been willing to do it if I would have done it in the front of the building. So I took a picture of him anyways!
Quinn on the rail car with me. Malcolm wasn't willing to get up here, because last time he ran his hand down the wire cable and got poked. I love Quinn's eyes and his hair sticking out on the side.
I wanted one against this red door thing, but the sun was in the boys' eyes, so we did a shadow picture instead.
There was another door on the other side of the building, so we walked down that way. I think this picture is so cute!
Quinn actually stood still for more then two seconds!
But it didn't last long, here they are playing around again. Probably playing guns or something. Earlier they were doing the robot as they sang "Mr Roboto". They are some cute boys!

Some More Black and White

So I thought I needed to get my sad post off the top of my blog. Sorry for making everyone cry! After writing it, the next morning I woke up with swollen eyes! I really do appreciate every one's sweet comments. I feel so blessed to have so many people that care about me!

I've been playing with more pictures in black and white. I decided I don't know that I really like my first one, besides the incredibly handsome boy in it, it just seems blah, with no depth to it. I don't know how to make it better though. So I played with some others.

These first two are Winston's feet when he was two weeks old (sniff!). I really like them. I did the channel mixer with them, but then added a photo filter in sepia to them, very subtle sepia. I like the way it made them look better.

I loved this picture of my niece Emma and my Mom giving her a kiss. Her straight face is adorable and those cute little checks! I wish she'd let me love on her!! So the original is here on my mom's blog, I like it too, but I like it in black and white better. I lover her eyes because they're blue, and love color for that reason, but I think with the colors, it draws the attention away from the sweet moment. That's why I like the black and white version. My personal opinion!
Off to bed now! Will I ever get out of this bad habit of stay up too late? I think I need some intervention!

Black and White

I love this site!! I have learned so much from Marc and I would recommend it to EVERYONE!! Every month he has what he calls a monthly special and I've liked taking part. The problem is, I haven't really taken part since....AUGUST!! I subscribe to his blog, read it, try everything. I just haven't had time to play with it. A couple of them I did, but just didn't get to posting the results, and for the last few month I have been consumed with Ryan and Stephanie's engagement pictures and making a guest book with their engagement pictures. That took a lot of my extra time. Anyways, now that the wedding and holidays are past, I plan on getting into my creative side and doing this. I do need the creative challenge, since it doesn't come easily to me. This month's monthly special is black and white. I love black and whites but I don't like how dull they look to me if I just let photoshop do it automatically or desaturated the picture. I'm so excited to learn all his different ways of turning pictures black and white. I'm hoping to do several of these this month! So here's my first attempt with his first tutorial. Isn't Malcolm looking way too old!?!

Photo within a photo

I can't believe it's the last day of August!! Where has all the time gone? I have been wanting to do this post all month long. I took this picture at the very begin of the month but was scared to be the first one to post. (I was one of the those kids in school that didn't want to raise my hand, in fear of being wrong.) Then all of the sudden it's the very end of the month and I'm just barely posting it!
This is a picture of Winston I took for his 6 month little "photo shoot". He's holding a picture of his Grandpa (Paka), who share middle names, and is probably about the same age. I can't take credit for all of it. Matt knew what the monthly challenge was, so he ran inside and grabbed this picture...I just took it.

The picture isn't perfect, the focus is on the chair, instead of Winston. There's a glare on the picture, Winston wasn't "cooperating" aka mostly just ate the picture, but since there is a glare, Matt's reflection is on the glass. I love it! It's a 3 generation picture! Despite the imperfections, I really love that we captured this picture.

Matt's Architectural Detail

I love my husband!! He is so very talented in way too many things!! He decided to take on the "Monthly Special" too. As I asked him to go get me my DQ Thin Mint blizzard, he stopped on campus with the tripod and took these pictures. Isn't he awesome!?! I love that he's learning to use my camera right along with me.
This is the clock tower on campus. It lights up at night...doesn't it look awesome! Too bad we don't have a zoom lens to get a closer shot of the clock.

Architectural Detail

Okay so I am doing this on the very last day of July...but I was just hoping that I could get some better pictures. I was hoping to go on campus and take some pictures there. They have plenty of "architecture" there. I walk up there everyday, but with 3 kids in tow and friends walking with me, I didn't feel I could stop for a photo shoot! I would still love to take a "time out" for myself and go up there soon.

Anyways, the "Monthly Special" from Take Out Photo was photographing architectural detail. I only took one picture on this, but I'll share three of the same thing. These are from our "family fun day" in Spokane. They have this fun fountain that the kids just love to run through. I just think it's plain awesome. I love using a fast shutter speed and capturing what the human eye can't see...stopping the water. So here they are:




Not much, but at least I was thinking about the challenge of it all month. Now it's being better and following through with it during the actual month. I guess I can blame all my lack of time management on having a baby!